Thousands of searches and hundreds of finds later, an Orange County musician still seeks the missing

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Musician Jannel Rap at her home in Placentia, CA, on Friday, Oct 12, 2018. Rap started the The GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation to help find missing people after her sister, Gina Bos, disappeared in 2000 (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

There have been no birthday cards, no phone calls, no news at all in the 18 years since Regina Marie Bos – everyone called her Gina – disappeared after playing an evening gig in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Musician Jannel Rap at her home in Placentia, CA, on Friday, Oct 12, 2018. Rap started the The GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation to help find missing people after her sister, Gina Bos, disappeared in 2000 (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Musician Jannel Rap at her home in Placentia, CA, on Friday, Oct 12, 2018. Rap started the The GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation to help find missing people after her sister, Gina Bos, disappeared in 2000 (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Musician Jannel Rap at her home in Placentia, CA, on Friday, Oct 12, 2018. Rap started the The GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation to help find missing people after her sister, Gina Bos, disappeared in 2000 (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Musician Jannel Rap at her home in Placentia, CA, on Friday, Oct 12, 2018. Rap started the The GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation to help find missing people after her sister, Gina Bos, disappeared in 2000 (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

But in the intervening years, Rap, a Placentia music teacher and singer-songwriter who performs regularly, has never stopped searching, not just for Gina but for thousands of other missing men and women, girls and boys.

Through the efforts of Rap’s nonprofit group, the GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation, as well as other musicians and volunteers and using social media outreach and old-school fliers taped up around town, hundreds of people have been recovered and reunited with loved ones, she said.

The culmination of the foundation’s annual concert series, the Squeaky Wheel Tour, is Wednesday, Oct. 17, the anniversary of the date Gina went missing. It includes local performances by musicians in Southern California and a dozen other states, many of which will be streamed on Facebook Live.

Rap uses whatever method she can to raise awareness of those who’ve gone missing. At an Anaheim Christian school last week, she brought posters for students to photograph and share with their Instagram connections.

“Every time I ask God or the universe or however you want to look at it, when I say to the air in front of me, ‘Should I be doing this,’ in a very short time, someone’s found,” Rap said.

“It only takes one flier, one share, one newspaper article. It only takes one set of eyes that knows something.”

Missing sister

On Oct. 17, 2000, Gina – who was then 41 – was playing an open-mic night at a Lincoln pub. After making plans for a future recording session, she left at closing time and was never seen again.

The next day, Gina’s car was found with the trunk ajar and her treasured guitar inside. She wouldn’t have abandoned the instrument or her three children, then aged 11, 13 and 15, Rap said.

But police had little to go on and made no progress.

“There were no screams, there was no blood evidence, no fingerprint evidence, her purse wasn’t found,” Rap said. “There was nothing.”

So she started her own search efforts and soon broadened them to include other missing people. The first success was in 2001, when a teenager from Indianapolis was found 11 months after he disappeared.

Rap was embarking on the Squeaky Wheel Tour, which enlists musicians in various cities to give concerts that raise awareness of people missing from the area and elsewhere. Fliers with each person’s name, description, photo and case details are posted and handed out. At a New York City concert, the Indianapolis teen saw his picture on a poster and called home.

Searches and finds

People go missing for all sorts of reasons, Rap said. Some are kidnapped, others have mental illness and may stop taking their medication. Some get entangled with people who make it hard to leave, or they’ve done things they think would make them unwelcome at home.

But no matter the reason they disappeared, families and friends want to know what happened to their loved one, Rap said. Otherwise they hold on to their grief.

That was true for Christina Generoso, who lives in New Jersey. Her son, Jason Grabert, was found in 2018, nine years after he disappeared at age 37.

Jason had a history of taking off to travel, crossing the country on freight trains and the like, Generoso said. He’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia and took the death of his grandmother especially hard, telling Generoso the government was targeting him and he needed to get off the grid.

The family waited to report him missing, hoping he’d come home like before. When he didn’t return, police said there was little they could do about an adult leaving of his own free will, Generoso said.

Generoso had befriended two women in a band who had offered their talents to the Squeaky Wheel Tour. She ended up telling her son’s story on stage at a concert to benefit Rap’s foundation, and Jason was featured on its website.

In January, years after Jason went missing, a Florida coroner visited Rap’s website, saw Jason’s picture and was able to match his remains to DNA samples Generoso and her daughter had given to New Jersey state police. Jason had taken his own life not long after he disappeared.

It’s not the ending Generoso wanted, she said, but it’s a relief that Jason is home now.

“I don’t have to answer every phone call that came through with an unidentified number. I don’t have to search everybody’s face at any place I go to,” she said. “I was always searching for him and now I don’t have to search anymore.”

Rap said she’ll keep up her foundation’s work as long as people are being found.

“What gets to me sometimes is how much work there is to be done,” she said. “Every time I think of quitting because I’m tired, because I have to work so much, something happens – like Jason is found.”

For information on the Squeaky Wheel Tour, the GINA for Missing Persons FOUNDation or any of the missing people it has featured, visit www.411gina.org.

Alicia Robinson covers Anaheim for The Orange County Register. She previously spent 10 years at The Press-Enterprise writing about Riverside and local government as well as Norco, Corona, homeless issues, Alzheimer's disease, streetcars, butterflies, horses and chickens. She grew up in the Midwest but earned Southern California native status during many hours spent in traffic. Two big questions Alicia tries to answer in stories about government are: how is it supposed to work, and how is it working?